


picking up the pieces

by VictoriaG16



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e03 Parallax, Episode: s03e15 Coda, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 11:36:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2190228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaG16/pseuds/VictoriaG16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the pieces left in your quarters in the aftermath, trying not to cut your hands on the bits of glass. // B'Elanna has lost Janeway to the last, impenetrable barrier we call death. Takes place during 3x15 Coda with references to 1x03 Parallax.</p>
            </blockquote>





	picking up the pieces

**Author's Note:**

> i am always crying about coda and b'elanna's heartwrenching speech in that ep
> 
> so basically this takes place in that universe where janeway was actually dead and didn't come back or whatever happened

You find it ironic that you’re waist-deep in some complex engineering problem when Chakotay walks into Engineering, steps quiet and head down. He puts a hand on your shoulder and whispers, like he’s comforting a child, that he needs to see you with the senior staff. Immediately.

Fear wraps its fingers around your heart, because it was unnecessary for him to come all the way down to tell you about a meeting unless something was very, very wrong. Your knowledge that something is so out of kilter with the way the universe should be is solidified when he walks you all the way to the briefing room.

You sit in your chair and the first thing you notice is that Janeway isn’t here and suddenly all you want to do is run to her, away from here, this suffocating room with sadness hanging in the air like bad drapes.

You close your eyes and let Chakotay’s words wash over you, everything after the first four lost in the emptiness sucking you in like a fucking quantum singularity.

_Captain Janeway is dead._

You want to saturate the opening you made when you entered this quantum singularity with warp particles and punch your way out of here, but this time you’re alone in the shuttlecraft and you’re not sure where to turn and fuck, you need her.

You need her too much, too badly, too overwhelmingly.

Its only once she’s gone, gone, gone that you realize that you’ve been _depending_ on her, on her unfailing strength, on her endless compassion. You _need_ her.

That word barely covers it. She has become an integral part of your life in so many ways that her suddenly being just _not here_ is unthinkable. It’s impossible. Something is wrong.

Everyone has left the briefing room except Chakotay, and he’s asking you something, but you can’t hear him, you’re stuck in a black hole of emptiness without her.

You choke out something about going back to your quarters, push yourself away from the briefing table (thinking about how many times she leaned on it), and take off before he can get another word in.

The corridors are dark without her light and her laughter and her everything. You hope your quarters retain some more substantial memory of her, like all the nights she was there have made the bulkheads gleam with her glory.

The first thing you see when you step into the room is one of her astronomy PADDs lying on the coffee table (a quiet sob gets stuck in your throat when you think of that drink) where she left it the night before, when you got out of the shower and she looked up at you and _smiled_.

Two days later, you find her old Academy sweatshirt in science blue tangled in your covers. You hold it to your nose and breathe in and it’s like you’re holding her again and you cry for what feels like hours, wrapped in a poor replacement for her embrace. You remember that she always used to be cold in here, and you remember taking off that sweatshirt and kissing her hard and you cry harder.

A week after that, you roll over in the middle of the night to find something pinching your shoulder, and find a bobby pin, bent out of shape. You hate bobby pins in your own hair, but she loved them. You remember watching her hair tumble across her shoulders when you pulled out the little pins and you carefully place the pin on your bedside table where it won’t get lost in the sheets that are slowly losing her scent.

You keep bottle of the soap she used to use in your shower, and sometimes you just smell it if you really need to remind yourself that she was real and not just a dream, and sometimes you use a little bit mixed with your own so that you can smell like you just spent hours under the covers with her again.

You could go on like this forever, searching for little pieces of her. Searching for answers. Searching the stars, where she should be. Where she deserves to be. But you know she wants you to stop, to move on with your life – what is a life without her? You just _can’t_ , you cannot, for whatever reason, leave her be. No matter how much she wants you to. And in that final, unspoken wish, you have failed her.


End file.
